Route URL Request Using RouteExistingFiles in MVC4

Here we go.

RouteExistingFiles is beneficial for preventing access to the files and allow ASP.Net to handle such requests using Route.

Open your Visual Studio, click on New Project and select ASP.NET MVC4 Web Application.

Specify the name of your first application and click OK.

A new window will appear, from that window I picked up intranet application whilst many options are there. Another intersting fact is that there is a dropdown named View Engine. I seleccted Razor that is more specific to MVC 3 and MVC 4 and kept the checkbox “create a new unit test” unchecked.

Click on the OK button.

The following screen is the default one that is shown after clicking the OK button. We have multiple folders.

We need to make some amendments to this to understand how routing works. The RouteConfig class is responsible for registering the RegisterRoutes method. This Application_Start method is called the ASP.NET platform when the application is started first.

And the default structure is depicted below. I've added two files into the Content folder of the root directory.

Let's see what happens when we run our application the first time with the default routing settings.

An idea to write this article is to be able to serve a physical file using a route, not by using a physical file in the site. I've created a route entry in the controller and action methods necessary to serve up the content: